The following article explains how data scientists can access datasets distributed through Web 3.0 technology, earning bounties of up to $25,000 USD for data science work. Engage with a global data science community to explore blockchain data exchange, solve data challenges, and learn how to become part of a Web 3.0 data economy powered by Ocean Protocol.
Asset Tokenization on the blockchain
Blockchain technology disrupted and evolved the Web 2.0 internet to Web 3.0. While Web 2.0 offers an exchange of information through intermediaries, Web 3.0 allows for a trustless exchange of value between two parties. On blockchain networks, the mean of exchange is tokens. They can represent various forms of value, including money (Bitcoin), ownership (NFTs), and utility (OCEAN).
The superpower of blockchains to tokenize assets helps to regulate proof-of-ownership and improves transparency. The recent multi-billion-dollar speculation around non-fungible tokens (NFTs) representing unique ownership over digital art and collectibles proves that Web 3.0 is experiencing unprecedented attention. While digital art was likely just the beginning for blockchain tokens, many use-cases still lie in the dark, waiting to be explored.
One such largely unknown use case for blockchain is the valuation, monetization, and exchange of datasets that Ocean Protocol initiated.
The Web 3.0 data economy
Blockchains can be used to tokenize non-traditional assets, like data and intellectual property. These tokens can then value, monetize and transfer assets that couldn’t be exchanged previously.
Ocean Protocol is a pioneer in this domain and deployed token standards across many blockchains to incentivize data owners to publish their datasets and intellectual property to an open-source data marketplace called the Ocean “Onda” V4 Data Market. Ocean’s technology pairs blockchain tools like decentralized finance (DeFi) to allow data to become a decentralized asset class. Effectively, Ocean Protocol’s technology makes datasets investable. Data owners can create ‘Datatokens’ for their datasets, a form of blockchain tokens that regulate the value and the access to their data. Speculators can also trade data tokens. Therefore, the Ocean Data Marketplace could be compared to a stock exchange for data assets, while it also provides the opportunity for data scientists to access data.
In summary, tokenizing datasets on the Ocean Marketplace help data owners to offer their data assets to buyers and investors. While data consumers can spend Datatokens to gain access to the underlying dataset for their purpose, speculators can trade Datatokens for profit. The supply and demand of the Datatokens determine the price of the underlying dataset. This unique concept gathered attention from various institutions, including Mercedes-Benz and the World Economic Forum.
Blockchain data challenges
Publishing data openly is not a common practice among companies around the world. While many executives believe their data holds the company’s dearest secrets and needs to be protected, they miss out on untapped potential economic value. One example is Goldcorp, a near-bankrupt business that released a 400MB .ZIP file of geographic drilling data to the world with the plea to submit potential mining sites. In return, Goldcorp offered data scientists a reward for every submission. More than 80% of the submissions led to the exploration of profitable sites, and Goldcorp grew to become a leading multi-billion-dollar mining business. Releasing open data to a global audience of data scientists with the right incentives creates incredible economic value.
Ocean Protocol, a pioneer within the Web 3.0 data economy, shares the vision of unlocking data and aims to bridge the gap between blockchain technology and data scientists.
Currently, there are several tokenized datasets on the Ocean ONDA Data Market, including a dataset related to consumer browsing data with over 230M data points from Decentr Network.
In collaboration with data publishers, Ocean Protocol recently released data bounties that incentivize the global data science community to solve real-world problems and create economic value for data owners that tokenize data on the Ocean Marketplace. Challenges include writing an algorithm for a dataset, establishing insights into the data, or determining whether the data could be valuable for other use-cases. Data challenges will generate real-world economic value on top of Ocean Protocol’s blockchain data marketplace. While exploring a variety of datasets, data scientists can also use other Ocean Protocol features, such as Compute-to-Data, and receive additional rewards.
Learn how to engage with the Ocean Marketplace with Data Whale’s Tutorials or visit Ocean Protocol’s website.
